Moldova Named Who Stole the Billion. What’s Next?

Vladimir Rotar Yesterday, the Moldovan Parliament presented the report of the ad hoc commission to investigate the stolen billion. It was created by the socialists and the ACUM bloc almost immediately after the anti-oligarchic coup No sensation The billion problem from the very beginning was one of the priorities of the new government. First, the country has long formed a powerful public demand for the return of stolen money and punishment of the perpetrators. Second, progress in this case was one of the main conditions of the European Union for the resumption of macro-financial assistance. All these months the head of the commission Alexander Slusar repeatedly declared obstacles thrown in the commissions’ way by the Prosecutor’s office and other state bodies. It is not surprising that now the opposition PDM tried to disrupt the presentation of the report, declaring a vote of no confidence in the government “because of the lack of socio-economic success”. Later, democrats defiantly left the meeting room in protest. After the demarche of the Democratic Party, deputies finally listened to the report on the investigation of the stolen billion. Alexander Slusar, obviously making a pitch, immediately said that the commission he leads had the “courage and drive” for the first time to name the participants of the bank theft. Among the names were: Candu, Leanca, Lazar, and many others. The main beneficiaries of the ‘fraud of the century’, according to the report, were the groups of Ilan Sor, Vlad Filat and, of course, Vlad Plahotniuc. Slusar’s report, as expected, revealed the extremely unsightly essence of the Moldovan authorities under the last regime, in fact illustrating the term ‘captured state’. It turns out that almost all the key state institutions somehow participated in the theft of money from Moldovan banks, or at least did not prevent it. At the same time, they were directly pressured by the country’s political leaders of the time, who, in Slusar’s words, “ensured the silence” of officials from various institutions. Can the stolen billion be returned? We can’t fail to see that the named participants of theft are only opponents of the present authorities. Of course, it is unlikely that anyone will dispute the guilt of the persons mentioned in the report. But there is reason to believe that the real list of all involved in this case is much wider and there would certainly be resounding names from the current ruling coalition. In any case, the presentation of the report is not even half the battle. Yes, the main beneficiaries of the theft have been named, but they have not been a secret for any resident of Moldova for a long time. The population demands not just a statement of facts, but imprisonment of the culprits and the return of the money withdrawn from the country. And there the problems begin for the new government – and on both counts. If Filat, Sor and Plahotniuc were the key participants in the withdrawal of the billion abroad, then, as it is easy to guess, the first one has been in prison for a long time, and the other two left the country fast and unhindered after the June events. Over the past four months, despite all the threatening statements of members of the ACUM and the PSRM, no significant progress has been achieved in the criminal prosecution of the two oligarchs. Requests to international agencies like Interpol or contacts of Andrei Nastase with the FBI were no help. And there is no reason to think that in the near future something will change for the better in this matter. And without their capture, returning the stolen money is almost utopia. In July, Alexander Slusar fairly admitted that it is now possible to return no more than 20% of the misappropriated amounts. Thus the deputy, referring to representatives of Kroll, declared that if search of the stolen money will take another 6 months, there will be nothing to return. The former Prime Minister of Moldova Ion Sturza in the summer gave a recipe for how to return the billion. According to him, there must be criminal proceedings against all those involved in the theft – from members of the government to international banks. Sturza noted that trying to return money from other countries through the courts is “an extremely long and expensive way”. International experts agree with him, saying that the process of returning the stolen billion will take decades. It is easy to guess that the current coalition being plagued by internal conflicts can’t handle such a complex task. The report of the parliamentary coalition was one of the triumphs of the new government. But whether the ruling coalition can move from words to deeds is a big question. Since both its wings are increasingly distracted squabbling with each other, there are fears that the main culprits of the bank theft will remain unpunished, and the stolen billion will be returned not by Plahotniuc and Sor, but by the citizens of Moldova. Moreover, no one remembers the election promise to repeal the law, which imposed compensation for losses from the ‘fraud of the century’ on the population.